Oedipus
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I'll tell thee, my Jocasta, for thou knowst
The love I bear thee, what this wicked Creon
Did artfully devise against me.
As knowing it himself, or from another ?
And sharpens every tongue against his king.
Joe. Let not a fear perplex thee, (Edipus ;
Mortals know nothing of futurity,
And these prophetic seers are all impostors ;
I'll prove it to thee. Know then, Laius once,
Not from Apollo, but his priests, received
An oracle, which said it was decreed
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He should be slain by his own son, the offspring
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Of Laius and Jocasta. Yet he fell
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By strangers, murdered, for so fame reports,
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By robbers, in the place where_three Avays meet.
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A son was born, but ere three days had passed
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The infant's feet were bored. A servant took
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And left him on the pathless mountain's top.
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To perish there. Thus Phoebus ne'er decreed
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That he should kill his father, or that Laius,
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Which much he feared, should by his son be slain.
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Such is the truth of oracles. Henceforth
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Regard them not. What heaven would have us know,}'
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It can with ease unfold, and will reveal it. ^
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